


Some Days

by captainbluebear



Series: Some Days [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Family, Gen, Harry Potter Next Generation, Parallel Universes, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 00:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6448186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainbluebear/pseuds/captainbluebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days, Remus is alive, while Tonks is just a memory. On other days, Tonks is the one who has to keep going alone. They are reaching out to each other across the void, never touching, always just moments away.</p>
<p>Teddy Lupin is lucky. He gets to have a mother and a father. Just not both at the same time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Days

Remus sat by Tonks as she lay in the great hall, stroking her hair. It was a dull brown, and he wished with all his might that it would return to its natural, beautiful pink and Tonks would open her eyes and smile at him.

Tonks held Remus’ cold hand, refusing to let go, even when Kingsley came and told her they were going to move the bodies. She didn’t cry until she got home and rushed to Teddy’s crib. Then, she held her baby close and wept.

***

Teddy gurgled, staring up at his mother. She was here for him. She was safety and protection. She was going to feed him and hold him and love him.

He didn’t want her. He wanted his father. He screamed and screamed until his mother bled away and his father was there, shushing him.

***

Remus saw his son, laughing and smiling at someone who wasn’t there. An empty bit of air could make Teddy laugh better than he could sometimes.

Sometimes Teddy would cry for her, but stop before Tonks had even entered the room. She would find him happy, content. She didn’t question it; she just enjoyed the silence.

***

Remus tried to send messages to her. He left little notes around the house, some handwritten, some left with a flick of his wand, leaving a space in the house with a certain shimmer, a certain feel to it that only Tonks would recognise. It was the same magic he and Tonks used to communicate when they fighting in the war. _Leave this magic for me, this ghost of a spell, a part of the room where things aren’t quite as they should be. Leave this for me, to tell me that you are safe._

He knew what her magic felt like. Her singular, breath taking magic. It was full of her, it was part of her. He hoped to feel it again.

He didn’t. He never heard back, never got a reply to his mad notes. He knew it wasn’t real. He just hoped.

***

Some days, for a brief moment, Teddy could see both of them, standing side by side, and he didn’t understand why they couldn’t see each other.

As Teddy got older, he saw them together less and less. He stopped telling Mum about the jokes Dad told him, because he couldn’t stand the look on her face, the half broken, half happy expression she got before she hugged him, and held him tighter than usual. He stopped telling Dad that it was Mum who broke Granny’s china mug, not him, because the disappointment in his father’s voice when he told Teddy not to lie hurt more than being scolded ever could.

Remus and Tonks told themselves that Teddy was making things up, that his other parent, his dead parent, had taken on the role of imaginary friend. The less he talked about it, the more sure they became.

The less he talked about them to each other, the less they appeared together, as if he was the only thing tying them together.

***

There were two worlds, shifting to give him a parallel view through both, sometimes pushing him into one, sometimes into the other. Occasionally Teddy saw into a third world, a universe down the end of a very long and terrible road, a universe without a Mum or a Dad. Teddy couldn’t look into that world without crying, and feeling ashamed.

Teddy was scared that one day he’d have to choose which world he wanted to live in.

***

Nothing was permanent, with Teddy. He shifted his shape, his image, as quickly as the wind changed. His thoughts and feelings jumped from one thing to another, never settling. He didn’t feel like a person, really. He didn’t feel solid enough. He was a conglomeration of times and events and thoughts and feelings that shifted and buzzed and moved in one great hive.

***

He tried to explain this once, to his father. He explained the way the world kept changing around him, the way nothing was real, the way his father was both alive and dead and so was his mother. He tried to string words together that could express what he experienced, the duality of it.

His father listened to him carefully, and told Teddy that he believed him. But he looked so sad that Teddy swore it was a lie and a game and he had meant nothing by it and said he was so, so sorry.

***

Teddy worked out eventually that it was best not to talk to anyone about what he saw. This was his secret, his maze to navigate through, and he told himself he should be grateful to have both parents, even if he couldn’t have them at the same time.

***

In the world where his mother was alive, Teddy was sorted into Hufflepuff. The next day he awoke in Gryffindor tower, and for the first time it struck him that he might not be the same in each world.

***

Teddy made the same friends in both houses, sorting be damned. They seemed drawn together, no matter what classes they were in or where they slept.

He met his first friend on the train. A tall, quiet boy, Edmund was an intimidating figure before you got to know him, but was easy to get along with. They both supported Puddlemere United and were hopeless at Quidditch themselves. That was something to bond over.

Edmund introduced Teddy to a small Ravenclaw boy called Jeremy. He was dark skinned with severely short hair that failed to cover the scar running down half of his face, obscuring the line of the left side of his jaw. Jeremy was shy, a not surprising product of being gawked at by strangers for his entire life, but he was funny, and talkative around friends.

Along with Jeremy came his sister, Josie, who was annoying and loud but very protective of her brother. Teddy had to respect her for that.

Teddy was incredibly surprised to find people who actually liked him. He had never expected that to happy. But Edmund, Josie and Jeremy seemed to enjoy his company, even when he was spacey and confused. They even helped him out, letting him copy their homework and borrow their notes when he needed to.

***

He had managed to make good friends, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t struggling. School is hard, when you live in two different worlds and you are never sure which one you’ve just woken up in. On the days his father was alive, he was a teacher at the school: Defence Against the Dark Arts. Teddy would do a piece of homework for his father, staying up all night the day before, and go to the class ready to hand it in, only to realise that his dad was dead today, and he was meant to write an essay on ethical use of defensive spells for Professor Alber, not an essay on Grindylows for Professor Lupin.

***

Teddy would go to his Dad’s office, to chat. Dad would make him a cup of tea, talk about his latest research. He let Teddy be quiet, or talk if he wanted to.

Once, he was sitting with his Dad, talking, when suddenly the world changed. The creatures in the office vanished, the walls changed colour, the cup in his hand was gone, and facing him was Professor Alber’s angry face.

He got double detention for breaking into his teacher’s office. His Dad didn’t understand why Teddy wouldn’t come for tea any more, but he didn’t push it.

***

In any world, Teddy was an odd child, a troubled child. He was distracted, morose. He could never quite settle. He got confused easily, and his school work was, well, not up to par. His teachers grew more and more concerned for him, especially as it got closer to his OWLs.

There were letters sent home. There were meetings. There were long tutoring sessions with his father, there were anxious missives from his mother. In both universes, his grandmother sent him home made biscuits by owl, “for studying”, and wrote in stern but loving words that she believed in his ability to succeed, that he was a smart boy, that there was no reason for him to be falling behind in school.

Teddy appreciated these letters from his grandmother. She was the one he felt was closest to understanding him. When he was younger, he sometimes caught her in the world where his father was alive, chatting to his mother. He asked his grandmother if she could see his mum. Teddy tried to hide his disappointment when she shook her head, but Teddy still felt like she knew something the others didn’t. She knew his Mum was still around, somehow.

***

With extra tutoring, and more effort than Teddy had put in to anything before in his life, he made it through his OWLs. His parents were delighted, and Teddy wondered what it would be like if they were there together, if they could celebrate together. Would they raise a glass, to his success, and clink their drinks together?

It felt like an empty victory, his OWLs. He felt less and less attached to either world, and the achievements that lay within them.  

***

One day, when Teddy was sixteen, his Dad died. He was teaching a second year class and his heart failed. It was quick, apparently. He sat down in his seat, tired all of a sudden, and then he was unconscious. By the time one of the students had got another teacher, there was nothing to be done.

It was not unsurprising, said the Healer who examined him. A shorter life span was natural in werewolves, when they underwent such strain on the body, month after month. Remus Lupin had collapsed under the weight of decades of painful transformations and years of poverty and malnutrition. His body was aged beyond his time and it was just too tired to go on.

It was okay. He wasn’t in pain when he died.

After his Dad died, everyone looked at Teddy like he was an orphan. He wanted to punch each and every one of them in the face. He wanted to scratch and scream and bite the way he did when he was a child and he was angry because his Mum or Dad had disappeared and he couldn’t comprehend the empty feeling of loss that was choking him. He wasn’t an orphan. His Mum was just on the other side, just around the corner, and Teddy was sure that his Dad was too. It was rude and distasteful, the way they looked at him. Projecting grief that wasn’t there.

He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t grieving, but Teddy still cried at night, every night, from the day his father died to the day of the funeral.

Teddy missed the funeral. It was on Sunday, and on that day Teddy woke up in the world where his mother was alive. He had gone to sleep in his grandmother’s house, his funeral robes hanging from bedroom door, and woken up in his dormitory, the sound of his roommate Charlie snoring emanating from the next bed.

It was weird, to wake up in a world where his father was dead, but hadn’t just died, and so felt more alive to him. It was a place where his father was dead, but the grief was muted, worn down over time.

He went to breakfast early. He caught up on his homework. He walked to the great lake and stared into it, enjoying the bitter cold weather. He was in a haze; the world did not seem quite real. He could see it but he could not feel it.

Teddy thought. He thought hard, and in some ways in became easy, as his thoughts were the only thing real in the world. It felt like a sign, that he had been swept away before he could attend his father’s funeral. The world didn’t want him to mourn. It didn’t want him to bury his father. It wanted him to fight.

There was a world where his father died in 1998, and there was a world where his father did not die in 1998. Therefore, there could be (there had to be) a world in which his father did not die in 2014. A world he might be able to get to.

Teddy lay down on the grass and stared up at the grey sky.

He needed to focus on himself, to work out how he moved. There were two worlds, running side by side, and he could move between the both them. When he was in one, the other one kept on chugging along without him.

He didn’t need to stay in these worlds. He could escape.

***

He stopped sleeping. Sleeping was when the shift happened usually. So he decided to be constantly conscious, to never make himself vulnerable.

He drank coffee. He downed potions meant for wakefulness. He meditated, and swore that that was enough to keep away his need for sleep. He was resting, but was always aware.

No one else would have lasted as long as he did. But no one else had the same tenuous relationship with reality as Teddy. Sleep couldn’t catch a boy like him, not if he didn’t want it to.

His friends worried of course. They cornered him a few times, told him that they were concerned. He brushed them off every time. He was getting good at it.

It was after five sleepless nights that Teddy felt the pull, the shift, the change of perception that occurred when moving from world to world. He refused. He said no. He stared the void down, looked into the space that divided him from elsewhere, and then turned his back. He stayed where he was, in the world where his mother was alive and his father was dead and his grief was quiet and manageable.

He stayed there for fifteen minutes, eyes closed, fighting against the force that was pressing on him more and more now that he refused to accept it. Eventually, it became too much and as he felt his head begin to compress, he let go just a fraction and was thrown into the world where his mother and father were dead.

He arrived on his bed at his Grandmother’s house. He fell asleep almost instantly.

***

He knew now, that he had some control. He practised, whenever he felt the feeling come upon him. He increased the time he could resist the pull, could stay put in one world. He sat in stillness for hours, in total focus.

He went back to school two weeks after his Dad died, but he didn’t care about that anymore. It wasn’t important to him. It didn’t mean anything. He didn’t bother with homework. He sat at the back of class and focused on the shift. He ate as little as he could get away with. He didn’t talk to his friends.

Everyone was scared for him. He didn’t know how to explain that there was nothing to be scared of, that he was close to making things okay.

Two months after his father died, Teddy made a breakthrough.

He sat on his bed in the Gryffindor common room with his eyes closed, and when the shift came, he said yes, but only for a moment. That he screamed _No, Stop,_ and he shuddered to a halt and was suspended, just out of this world but not into the next one over. He opened his eyes.

The gap between worlds was white, and shimmered as though a thousand tiny mirrors were suspended in it. There was no ground; directions did not appear to be a concept relevant to this place. Teddy put one foot in front of the other, but he could never be sure he was moving.

He stayed there for ten minutes, or maybe an hour or maybe a day. Eventually, he moved on to the Gryffindor common room, in the world of his dead father. He arrived on his bed and did not leave there, but sat and waited for the next shift.

***

His roommate Charlie reported him, and perhaps he would have been bitter in the past, but Teddy had no room for those feelings now. He had a mission, and that was all that mattered.

He ignored Professor Longbottom when he came to speak to Teddy. He didn’t fight when he was gently guided to the hospital wing, but he didn’t respond to anyone who spoke to him.

They fed him intravenously in the hospital wing and sent an urgent owl to his Grandmother. She had just stepped out of the fire in the headmistress’s office when Teddy made his way back into the gap.

He did not meander this time. This time he had purpose.

He opened his eyes just a moment to make sure he truly was in the white world, then closed them again. He had to focus. He could not move with his legs or his arms, he knew that now.

He thought about movement, imagined being away from here, and then knew that he had moved. He opened his eyes. He was surrounded by white still, but there was a patch in front of him that was off colour, that was vibrating more than the rest of his surroundings. He touched it.

_I am a ghost in the ground I am a ghost in the ground I am a ghost in the ground._

He was in the earth, the soil, the plants. He was flowing in the water and being excreted by earthworms. He was compost. The ground that he was shook slightly in terror.

He was back in the white. He stared in horror at the place he had touched. That was not a good world. He should not go back there.

***

In one world, his grandmother was holding his hand. In another world, his mother was holding his hand, and his grandmother was holding hers.

***

Still in the white. The Shimmering White. He liked that name better than the other things he had called it. It was less scary, somehow.

He had to move on. He had to keep going.

He moved swiftly, touching the White with his fingertips as he went, seeing the worlds, knowing them. Most worlds didn’t have him at all, which he had always half suspected, and was okay with now. It didn’t hurt to not exist.

There were some worlds where his mum was dead or his dad was dead or they both were dead, and Teddy swept by these as quickly as he could. He found worlds where his parents had never been in love. He found one world where they had loved each other, desperately, but the love had faded and had eventually been replaced by hatred. That was the world he disliked the most.

After he passed the world, he could feel that he was getting closer to the goal. The end was nearing.

There was blank emptiness for a long term, just the gentle shimmering. Nothing to indicate a way through.

But, as Teddy move farther and farther in one direction, he started to feel a greater sense of wellbeing. Going that way just made him feel safe. So he kept going.

He could see ahead of him a shimmering – no, sparkling – point, and he knew that was where he needed to be. It was beautiful. He wanted to run to it, but he could not run, only move at a singularly slow place. He longed for that point in the White, but it made him wait for it.

When he reached it, he did not hesitate. He moved forward, allowing himself to be engulfed entirely. He was sure this was it.

He blinked once, twice. The room slowly came into focus. His father was beside him, his lined face tired and full of anxiety. His mother sat next to his father, giving him an exhausted smile.

Despite himself, Teddy slept. When he woke up, they were still there.

***

He had been taken to St Mungo’s after he collapsed at school, his parents explained.

“You weren’t eating Teddy,” said his Mum. She was still holding his hand; Teddy insisted on it. He felt childish and ashamed, but he couldn’t help but cry whenever one of his parents left the room. If he couldn’t see them, they didn’t feel real and the grief overtook him. He had lost the ability to speak, and anyway they couldn’t understand, couldn’t comprehend that his mother had already died once, and his father twice. He needed them.

They didn’t understand but they stayed with him. They took turns sleeping on a camper bed in the corner of his room. There was always someone sitting by his side. Right now it was his mother.

“They say you hadn’t slept for weeks. They think you might have had an infection. You were so weak.” His mother’s eyes were glistening. Her hair was mousy brown. “They’re treating you now. As long as you keep taking that disgusting potion three times a day-“ Teddy grimaced. He had almost thrown up that potion at breakfast-“ you should be right as rain pretty soon.” His mother stroked his arm.

Teddy smiled at her. “Thank you Mum.”

Teddy could have sworn some colour returned to her hair. Just a little.

***

He went home two weeks later. He had to walk before he could, which was easier said than done. He took his first steps leaning on his father’s side. As he stumbled across the floor, it felt as though his legs were made of jelly. They shook with every step and seemed reluctant to obey him.

But slowly, walking, like talking, came back to him. He was exhausted, and slept for most of those two weeks in hospital, catching up on the months he had missed. But he recovered enough that he could be taken home in a wheelchair, and make the long walk from the wheelchair to his own bed. He fell into it with a sense of utter bliss.

His mother and father both took time off work to help him recuperate. His mother started cooking for him, and Teddy listened, amused by the sound of pots and pans banging and crashing in the kitchen. The food tasted delicious.

Once Teddy was healthy enough to sit up and concentrate for a reasonable chunk of time, his dad started to catch him up on his schoolwork. He had missed a lot, it turned out, in this world as well as the others. He had NEWTs coming up next year and he had to get a crack on if he didn’t want to have to repeat a year.

Thankfully, his father was an excellent teacher.

He had forgotten just how entertaining his father could be. His dad took Teddy through all of the basics quickly and easily, peppering his lectures with anecdotes, and the occasional funny-in-a-painful-way joke. He took Teddy through test questions, probing him, challenging him, getting Teddy to think through and give the best possible answer. He would give Teddy a debate topic and a stack of books to research with, then come back a few hours later ready to grill him. At first his dad would always win their debates, but gradually Teddy improved. It filled Teddy with pride to see his dad delighted at being defeated by his son.

His dad seemed to be delighted a lot of the time. He laughed and smiled more than Teddy had ever imagined he could. It was bizarre and wonderful to see his father in a world where his mother was alive.

***

Teddy had turned seventeen while he was asleep in St Mungo’s. It was weird to him. Adulthood had come in an instant, almost passing him by. He had always expected to be independent by now, to be a grown-up who didn’t need anyone.  He hadn’t expected to be more dependent and weak than he had been for years. But then again, he never expected to be seventeen and watching his mother and father joking and laughing together. It was worth all the helplessness.

***

By the time Teddy was strong enough for visitors other than his family, the school year had ended. Teddy felt a lurch in his stomach when his mother mentioned his friends coming to visit. Friends. He had forgotten about those. He had been so focused that he had let all his friendships go by the wayside. They just hadn’t been important. He felt guilty now, as his friends came to visit him, spending their precious holiday time at his bedside.

Victoire Weasley came first, bouncing gently up and down on his bed and talking at breakneck speed about all the gossip he had missed. A lot had happened while he was away, apparently. Josie Oswald had come out and was dating Sophia Deng, Winifred Leerson, a fourth year Ravenclaw whom Teddy had never heard of, had nearly been expelled for attempting to curse her boyfriend when he cheated on her, and Lizzy Dunnett, former school genius, had failed her sixth year and would have to repeat it.

“The pressure got to her,” said Victoire with a knowing look on her face. “It’s so easy to freak out when everyone has such high expectations for you, I guess. I heard her parents were not pleased.” Victoire said this last sentence with a menacing tone to her voice. Teddy felt a flash of sympathy towards Lizzy Dunnett. He still didn’t know if he would have to redo sixth year.

Victoire was in many ways the easiest person to hang out with. She seemed to sense that he wasn’t up to talking up, so she filled the space with whatever thought came into her head.

Other people were more difficult to talk to. His friend Edmund was his typical taciturn self, a trait Teddy had often appreciated in the past but now came to resent. Jeremy just seemed incredibly sad.

All of his friends had been worried about him. In any world, Teddy was screwing things up for people he loved.

***

The summer went on. Teddy was almost completely recovered. He was no longer trapped in bed or on the sofa, and could manage short walks into town. His catch up sessions began in earnest.

His father was determined that Teddy should not have to repeat a year, and Teddy was too. He couldn’t stand the burning shame of watching his friends graduate without him.  He had a textbook with him wherever he went. He was constantly muttering potions recipes or plant care tips under his breath. He wrote essay after essay. He only slowed down when his parents expressed concern that he was pushing himself too hard.

He couldn’t help but be obsessive. It was in his nature. He was glad to have something new to focus on. It helped distract him from the unquiet he felt in his bones. But still, he slowed down for their sake.

***

Teddy went back to Hogwarts a week earlier than everyone else, travelling with his father. There, he took the exams necessary to move immediately into seventh year. He passed with flying colours. His father took him to The Three Broomsticks to celebrate.

It was scary, when the school year began and the rest of the school came flooding in. Teddy was used to quiet. He forced himself into the routine, embracing the hustle and bustle of it all. For the first time, he was able to truly focus at school. He could go to lessons sure of what they were going to be on, knowing he wouldn’t switch halfway through and end up in the wrong room.

He had been wondering if it might happen again. He was half expecting to be pulled back into the White at any moment, and end up stranded back in the world where his mother and father were dead. But something inside him told him that it wouldn’t happen. And so far it hadn’t.

So he got back into the flow. He let himself become a part of ordinary life. He studied hard and he laughed with his friends. He kissed Jeremy, one blustery November morning, while standing out by the lake. He wrote his parents to tell them and they were happy for him. They had always loved Jeremy; he was a good boy.

They did mock NEWT exams in January. Teddy scored over 90% in every one.

Everything seemed to be falling into place for the first time in Teddy’s life.

Why then, Teddy thought to himself late at night, did everything feel so wrong? Why did his skin buzz the way it did? Why were his teeth constantly on edge?

Sometimes he heard a voice, whispering in his ear, telling him the truth he longed to avoid.

_You know why,_ the voice said. _It’s because you don’t belong here._

Teddy tried to block out the voice as best he could. He hummed to himself, he talked to himself. He studied and studied and studied. He surrounded himself with friends, refusing to be alone with his thoughts. He thought if he lived hard enough, the whispers at the edge of his mind would leave him alone.

They didn’t. They came for him in his sleep. They came in his dreams.

They called him _Thief. Usurper. Liar_

_You shouldn’t be here,_ whispered the voices, _This isn’t your world. This world belongs to another Teddy and you stole it from him._

Teddy awoke from these dreams nauseous and shaking, unable to get the thought of the other Teddy out of his head. The other Teddy, snatched from his happy, kind world and thrown out into the White. Maybe he was still there. Or maybe he wasn’t anywhere at all. Teddy shuddered.

_You were given a gift,_ said the voices in his dreams. _You were allowed two worlds, while most only get one. You were allowed to roam, to be free. You were given a mother and a father. But it wasn’t enough. You were greedy._

“You’re lying!” Teddy shouted in his dreams, but the voices never listened to him. They kept going, their constant refrain. _Thief. Thief. Thief._

Teddy stopped sleeping.

He couldn’t do it any more. He couldn’t face the voices.

He was used to not sleeping. He was good at it, or so he thought. He replaced sleep with studying and reading. He went back to the energy potions he swore he would never take again. He had to stay awake. To him, there was no choice.

He spoke to his friends less and less. He didn’t want to be near Jeremy; he didn’t deserve him. He just wanted to be alone. He could feel the worry rising in them; he could see the hospital wing and being sent home and missing his NEWTS, all on the horizon. But he didn’t sleep.

The world became hazy. It started to shimmer.

He was in transfiguration. He was trying to concentrate, but the teacher’s words slid through his brain and he couldn’t grasp on to them. His eyelids were heavy and drooping. He let them close.

When he awoke, he was in the White.

He wanted to scream, but when he opened his month his voice was gone. He didn’t want to be back here. He couldn’t be back here. He’d made it out.

He heard something. A rustling sound, the sound of movement. Teddy turned sharply and there he was. Him, Teddy. Another version of himself, standing in the White.

“What’s going on?” said the boy Teddy, terror high in his voice. “Who are you? Why do you look like me? Where are we?”

Teddy shook his head in despair. This Teddy didn’t know. He had never been into the White before. He didn’t understand.

“I was in school,” the other Teddy continued, babbling. “I was in the hospital wing. And then I fell asleep and I ended up here.” He gestured all around him. “I haven’t seen anyone before you. Why won’t you answer me?”

Teddy just shrugged. He didn’t know what to say.

The other Teddy started breathing heavily. “My parents, my parents must be so scared right now. I don’t even know how long I’ve been gone.” He looked directly at Teddy. “Do you know how time works here? I can’t figure it out.”

Teddy shook his head.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” The other Teddy’s voice shook with repressed sobs. He was trembling with terror.

But Teddy couldn’t talk to him. His throat was stuck, his lungs were full. He understood, understood that this was the boy he had displaced, and the guilt had frozen his vocal cords. Teddy knew what he had to do now. It killed him, that he almost didn’t do it.

Teddy moved forward, and touched his counterpart on the shoulder. He pointed in the direction he had come from, towards the shimmery point beyond which his living, breathing parents waited.

“I need to go that way?” said the other Teddy, looking apprehensive.

Teddy nodded.

“Thank you,” said the other Teddy, before moving forward to the patch of off-white. He disappeared through it with a sigh of relief. Teddy was left alone in the White.

_What now?_

Teddy looked around. Where could he go? Not back. Not back to the grief and the pain. He thought of his mother. His grandmother. They missed him. They needed him. Surely he owed to them to go back.

He moved forward, staring at the various flickers of off-white he passed. He wondered about the state of back home.

They never seemed to miss him, when he moved between worlds. There always seemed to be something there, a place holder. When he was a child who shifted between two worlds, there had never been any alarm caused by him disappearing.

There were probably two Teddys right there now, sitting content in his original worlds. His mother and grandfather were fine. They didn’t need him. There were others. There were infinite Teddy Lupins, he had come to realise. He was just one of them, nothing particularly important or special. It didn’t matter where he went, so long as he did not displace another.

In a way, he was free.

He smiled to himself, and then propelled himself towards one simmering patch of cream. He touched it. He felt this world. His parents were there. They were happy and alive. They were together. They were childless.  

Teddy didn’t exist in this world, but he wasn’t dead there either. He could slip through, surely, without taking a place from any other Teddy. He could join this world. This one in which his parents were alive.

He thought about going back home again. Going back was safe, was familiar, but it hurt, it hurt so much and he just wanted out of the damn thing. He wanted to build a new life.

He moved forward.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and constructive criticism are always greatly appreciated


End file.
